This Is The Morning
by Beatrice Otter
Summary: I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here.” Post Season 5 and The Last Battle.


Written for adaptationdecay in the Crossover Exchange Ficathon (xover_exchange)

Thank you to laney-1974 for the beta

* * *

The sword in Buffy's hand was perfectly balanced, flowing effortlessly through the air as an extension of her body. Each step was a dance, each movement of muscle an expression of pure joy. The rush of endorphins and adrenaline lifted her up, blood rushing in her ears. Buffy had never felt so alive in her entire life.

She was dead.

After the first shock, she had been too happy to care, much. She hadn't expected that. Having spent most of her life dealing with the reality of Hell, the possibility of Heaven wasn't one she'd thought much about.

Her opponent was quite a challenge—more than any normal human she'd ever fought. They had been dueling for ten minutes now, and Buffy had found herself drawing on reserves of Slayer reflexes and all the tricks she'd learned from Giles. Parry, thrust, feint, two good solid blows one after the other, sidestep around his return, under his guard—but Peter rallied in time, and the blow that should have struck true was deflected, and the dance went on.

At last, even the High King's skill was not enough, and he began to slow. Not much, not enough that the untrained eye would see, but enough that a Slayer could break through and land a blow that would have killed him in a real fight.

But there was no death here. Her sword touched him and stopped, not piercing the skin, not even leaving a bruise.

Applause came from the watching humans and animals, and Buffy sheathed her sword with a flourish and bowed to the crowd. "Thank you, thank you very much," she said. "I'll be here all week, three shows a day. Don't forget to tip your waitress." She smiled and waved. She doubted most of them knew what she was talking about—Narnia had been a much different land than America—but here, where all things were understood, they knew what she meant and laughed with her. She took a deep breath, enjoying the endorphins flowing through her body. If she'd been alive, that natural high would have been accompanied by fatigue, muscle ache, bruises (however fast her slayer-healing would have gotten rid of them). Not here.

There was a glass of orange juice waiting for her, sitting on a flat rock. She took it and drank, enjoying the perfect tanginess of it, the way the pulp stuck to her teeth just the way it had when she was a small girl and Mom would make her fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast. Except better, because she didn't need to go brush her teeth and spoil the flavor of it afterwards.

"Thank you, my lady, for the honor of witnessing so glorious and skillful a duel!"

The words came from about her knee level. She looked down, and blinked; it was a mouse, bowing low with a flourish straight out of those Errol Flynn movies she'd watched with Mom. Still, if they had talking horses and cats (and she felt a stir of childish glee at the thought), why not mice? Gravely, she returned his bow. "Hey, it was my pleasure."

"Mine, as well."

Buffy turned to face her sparring partner. He really was cute, tall and strong, breathing deeply after such exercise. It was hard to judge his age—he seemed to be in his mid-twenties. Then sometimes, just for a second, he almost looked like a boy. She wondered if that was how he saw himself, or if it was how the others here saw him. Or if both were true. The sun glinted off his hair, almost like a halo, or a crown. "Are you sure you're fully human?" she asked. "'Cause you gave me a lot more challenge than I usually get."

"Fully human," Peter replied with a smile. "And considering _your_ abilities, I'll thank you for the compliment! I hope the challenge was worth the travel?" As their audience drifted away, he held out an arm.

Buffy removed her shoes to enjoy the cool grass between her toes, and then took his arm, walking through the meadow. "How could it not be?" Buffy asked. "Everything's perfect, here. If fighting you wasn't what I wanted, I wouldn't have found you. And if I want to go somewhere, I just turn around and I'm _there_, unless I want to enjoy the journey, in which case it takes exactly as long as it needs to

"I confess, I've not been anywhere but Narnia since my arrival here," Peter said. "I suppose eventually I'll go see what the true England is like—London and Oxford, and perhaps the Professor's house. Although I have so many fond memories of that house, I don't see how even Aslan could improve on what I knew in old world."

"You're from England?" Buffy said with some surprise. "I've never been there myself, but I'm pretty sure that if they had giant talking animals Giles would have mentioned it." They paused to watch a herd of centaurs gallop past, weaving intricate patterns around one another, leaping over logs and rocks and the occasional smaller creature. "Or centaurs," she said, laughing. They looked like they were having so much fun, more pure happiness than Buffy had ever known in her life, but Buffy realized with satisfaction that she wasn't jealous. No matter what pain she'd had in life, what problems, none of that mattered here. Here, all her pain was healed, and she felt freer than she'd ever been in her life to be herself, Buffy. Fun as the centaur romp looked, she wouldn't trade herself for anything. For the first time in her life she had no desire to be anything or anyone other than Buffy Anne Summers, Slayer.

"From England originally, yes," Peter said. "Lived most of my life there. Though I'm Narnian through and through. You see, there are more worlds than just this one and the shadowy reflection we _thought_ was the real one when we were alive. There are many real worlds here, and each has its reflection there. There are … places where you can slip through from one world into another, and my brother and sisters and I came to Narnia—the shadowy Narnia—through one of those. And back to the shadowy England that we all thought was the real one, again. My younger brother and sister, Lucy and Edmund, came more times than I did."

"I know about portals," Buffy said. "Though not ones that take you someplace _nice_."

"Oh, this Narnia is far better than the one I first knew," Peter said. "This is Aslan's country, and everything is a new creation, pure and whole. Just like I imagine everything in the true England—or the true America—is made new."

"Yes," Buffy said. Though she knew, somehow, that no matter how broken and shadowy a reflection of this country the Narnia Peter had originally known had been, it was nothing like the Hell dimensions that had been spilling forth evil her entire time in Sunnydale. But she understood without bitterness why Peter had gotten the beautiful Narnia and she had gotten Hell. The shadow world was in a delicate balance, one she could never have perceived when she was alive. Her own experience, her own pain, would have blinded her. Until the world ended and was made anew (which would happen, had already happened by some perception of time, or else how could she find herself in the real Earth?), the First Evil had power. Too large a victory over it in that in-between world would dangerously unbalance things, give it too big an edge.

So for every visit to Narnia, there was a visit to Hell. But for every demon or hell-creature, there was a person of grace and power. And in the end, the hellishness was burned away. You couldn't see it from the trenches, from the battlefield. But Buffy could see it, now. Could feel it, _emlive/em_ it. In the other world, someone needed to hold back the tide, to keep the damage to a minimum, to shine a little light in dark places. Buffy had been called because she could do that work, and not be corrupted or consumed by it, better than others. Better than Peter. But Peter could do for Narnia what he could not have done for Earth. It all balanced out, in the end. A phrase from her childhood floated through her mind. _When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window._

"So, your siblings are here, too?" Buffy asked.

Peter paused, regret in his eyes, the closest anyone could come in this world to pain or grief. "Edmund and Lucy are, yes," he said. "We came together—died in a train accident. Our other sister, Susan—she is still alive in that other England. But I am afraid she is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Buffy said, rubbing his arm for support. That she—that anyone—might not get to come to the real world and be made whole was the most tragic thing she'd ever heard of. "But Aslan is still _her_ friend, even if she doesn't want to acknowledge him," she pointed out. "I mean, that lion is _the_ most persistent being in the history of the world. Any world. Just because your sister doesn't want him around doesn't mean he's going to go away."

"But if she rejects Him to the end, all his persistence will not matter," Peter pointed out. "Aslan doesn't force people to acknowledge him. Not if they're truly determined to ignore him." He stopped walking, looking down.

"Then you'll just have to have faith," Buffy said, stepping in front of him. It was a good thing she was so much shorter than him—it put his downcast gaze right at her eye level. "Faith that Aslan will keep trying, and faith that your sister will eventually let him in. She has time, you know. And if she never does—that's her choice to make. You can't make it for her—you can't force her any more than Aslan. And whatever happens, it's not your fault. All you can do is have faith." That was a lesson she'd never truly learned, in life. She'd never truly been able to have faith in something outside of herself. She'd lived through too many betrayals. It was one of the greatest healings she'd had here, to be relieved of that burden.

Peter held her eyes, for several seconds. Then he sighed. "Thank you," he said. "I needed to hear that. Lucy has been trying to tell me that for sometime, but I didn't truly believe it until just now."

"Then it's a good thing I came," Buffy said. "Guess it wasn't a coincidence I found you to fight, out of all the people in all the worlds, when I wanted a good challenge."

"I suppose not," Peter said. They began walking again.

There was music on the breeze—someone was singing. Many someones. It was a song Buffy had never heard before, yet resonated in her very bones. She had no words to describe it; it was truth and beauty and goodness, wrapped in sound. They waited until the song was done—minutes or days, it could have been either—before talking.

"Do you have any loved ones, back in the shadow world?" Peter asked at last.

"Yes, several," Buffy said. "Friends, mostly, but closer than a lot of families. And my sister, Dawn. I died to save her. And the world, but mostly her. I hope she's doing okay—I can't wait to see her here, with me and Mom. But I hope she has a wonderful life, before that happens."

"So do I," said Peter.

Later, she said her goodbyes—the mouse, Reepicheep, asked the honor of a duel, and she told him he was welcome to stop by her world any time—and went home. Home to California—the_ real_ California. Except it was also London, and China, and Africa, and South America, and Cleveland, and Australia, and every other place a slayer had ever called home. Girls were everywhere. Slayers, and their loved ones. All colors of the rainbow. The ones who had been alone in the dark, now together in the light.

"Did you have a nice time, Buffy?" Mom asked, giving her a hug.

"Yeah, sure. It was great," Buffy said, bouncing a little. "Met a guy named Peter—he was nice, and we had a great chat. He was a lot of fun to fight. Took me a while to beat him. He's got a friend named Reepicheep who may be coming around to fight, sometime."

"If you want a real challenge, Buffy, why don't you try me?" Buffy turned, to see Kendra behind her, standing on the balls of her feet, ready for a fight. Her hair was in cornrows, and the green outfit she was wearing set off her dark skin beautifully. In her eyes was a spark of humor and a dare Buffy couldn't resist.

"Bring it on," she said, discarding her sword, since Kendra didn't have one. Besides, interesting as it had been to fight Peter with it, a Slayer's truest weapon was her own body.

Kendra began to circle her. "It has, as you say, already been broughten."

Buffy threw back her head and laughed. It was wonderful to be home, with all the sisters that had gone before her. With perfectly mirrored slayer reflexes, they began the contest.


End file.
